The Tolkien Coming of Age Club

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I was just wondering if LoTR fostered a love for reading in those of us who read it as kids.

Actually I couldn't really get to grips with The Lord of the Rings until I was about 14; and the first time I think I really appreciated the full depth of the book was probably when I read it on an Air Training Corps summer camp in the summer of my eighteenth year. I can still remember that while others loudly exchanged dirty jokes and banter, or listened to Walkmen, I was reading The Two Towers.

I remember this because I was reading the cheap paperback I mentioned earlier: it had long since given up the ghost, despite my attempts to hold it together with tape, fabric glue and, in a fit of desperation, epoxy resin. The middle of the book had fallen out in two big clumps, and half-way through Treebeard was a page that hadn't been able to decide which way to jump, so reading that chapter tended to be rather difficult.

In answer to your question, then; I had already been bitten by the reading bug before I got to school, let alone discovered Tolkien. However, as I've grown older and (hopefully) wiser I've only come to appreciate his writings and philosophy more and more. I find that he makes me appreciate my gift of reading, and the richness of the English language and its literature, for which I am indebted to him.

[EDIT] In my haste to submit the above I neglected to thank you for your greeting, lindil. Well met!

It certainly does have a different feel than all of those 'mixed age' threads!

Conversations, like water, tend to find their own level, old boy. Clearly ours has found its way into a deeper pool. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

[ February 19, 2003: Message edited by: Squatter of Amon Rudh ]